Interesting!...I was thinking that perhaps students experienced clear descriptions of what they needed to learn from their teachers as their teachers caring that they learned the (math) content: She's telling me because she cares about me. It comes out more perhaps when stated as an opposite - a teacher who doesn't (isn't able to) explain the content clearly doesn't care about me (when actually, the teacher may care about the student, she simply isn't able to describe/isn't doing a good job of explaining the math clearly). This is truly an intriguing finding. Also, isn't the second highest correlated "C" dimension on the TRIPOD scale with positive student outcomes "clarify"? It would resonate with simple logic that a teacher who could "clarify" content best would get better/best student outcomes, but maybe the reason isn't just the delivery of rigorous content but how it is received, as (love) caring for the student. In other words, clarifying is doing more than meets the eye.Will you be pursuing this research yourselves any further or is the project complete? Either way, what would be most useful next steps from your view?

Thanks for this comment. It’s all interesting to consider. From our point of view, this idea is pretty new, so we’re still theorizing about what might be happening in this data. It’s fun (and important!) to consider the many possibilities here. I think what’s particularly compelling to me is that this provides some evidence that growing habits of mind may support both increased mathematical outcomes (mathematical knowledge), and impact other important school factors for students.

This round of the research is complete at this point, but we hope it can move forward in some way. It would be interesting to consider interviewing some of the students to find out more about how they conceive of caring in this kind of a context. In particular, I could imagine prompting them with items about how rigorous content impacts their feelings about classes across these dimensions might be revealing. I’d be curious to know from your point of view what might be substantive next steps.

Thank you Miriam for your thoughts. Love your ideas and appreciate your sharing.

Peter, thank you for asking. It is a bit challenging to discuss in a short blurb in no small part because DEbT-M provided a 2-year program of professional learning. Addressing racially-based inequities takes significant time and effort so I think being sure to be committed for several years of consistent focus is a critical foundation. Our program was a bit distinct in that we took a systems-based approach. Therefore we did not spend significant time focused on particular practices that teachers could use in their classrooms. We did explore and draw on some key practices included Complex Instruction (Ilana Horn's book was very valuable for teachers) and the Five Practices for Classroom Discussions; and we used key protocols, such as Courageous Conversations about Race, but these were tools for us, rather than the focus.

Rather than being practice-focused, we explored systemic oppression and institutionalized racism through narratives, structures, and tools (which did include system and classroom practices such as grading practices and tracking). We really dig into these- what they are, what mental models contributed to their foundations, who has power within each, what is the impact on different groups of each- focusing on getting multiple perspectives before thinking about how to change the system. A key element was that all participants--from teachers to facilitators to administrators--were to acknowledge how we each independently perpetuate racial inequity in our own practice, something that we have to accept that we wall do; then, through our developing understandings, we made decisions about what to change and how. We did not prescribe what teachers changed. Rather the focus of changes was based on significant study of practice, personal data collection, and collaborative discussions of that data. Ultimately, our goal was to empower teachers as change agents to understand and impact the systems in which they work. This enables them to continue to respond and adapt and grow as needs change and progress is made.  

I think a big takeaway is, there is no one pathway to follow to achieve equitable practices; however, the pathway chosen must be purposefully designed with the system, the teacher and the students in mind. Done in this way, many avenues can lead to significant changes as the data in the video suggests. 

Thank you for this question! As I wrote earlier, I think we are still exploring the possible reasons for this correlation. This is one that came up repeatedly during our conversations. Unfortunately, we do not have data to address this question explicitly. I think whatever was happening was occurring in the presence of an intervention that addressed a number of different classroom factors, so we can’t be sure that MHoM alone had the impact. On the other hand, in previous, anecdotal work, we have heard from teachers (outside of this study) who found their students to be more engaged or responsive as a result of focusing on mathematical habits of mind in the classroom.

Unfortunately, in this study we did not collect the kind of data that would help us make the determination of what the exact nature of the relationship was. This line of work requires and demands further investigation. As I suggested before, I think student interviews might help us unpack some of these relationships in a way that the survey data could not. I’m particularly intrigued by the relationship between growth in use of mathematical structure and classroom management. This relationship did not seem obvious to me at first, but I did wonder if it suggests that classrooms with increasingly rigorous mathematics engage students, resulting in fewer classroom management issues. On the other hand, this could also indicate that a careful person is a careful person in multiple settings as you suggest.

How would you think about trying to understand this a bit more?

Thank you, Miriam, for wondering aloud (with us) about these relationships and considering the type of data that might make the correlations even more meaningful in the future.  You might find interesting connections between math structure and immediate outcomes like classroom rigor/relevance which, over time, translate into different types of outcomes like inclusiveness (not marginalization) and engagement. It would be interesting to see whether time/dosage matters and to consider variation by student and course demographics.  I know, that's a whole other project!  Exciting to consider....